


The Nightmare From Which I Cannot Wake

by kayeherl



Series: Are You Scared of the Dark? [2]
Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Did I Mention Angst?, I'm Sorry, IT'S SO ANGSTY, M/M, i don't even know what i'm doing anymore, it's sad, no smut at all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 03:26:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6313543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayeherl/pseuds/kayeherl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bass Monroe wakes up to find the only person he's ever trusted pointing a gun at him. Miles doesn't know what he's doing there, and he can't seem to follow through, and why can't he just pull the goddamn trigger? A look at the night Miles Matheson tried to kill Monroe before leaving the Republic. (It's actually part 2 of my Revolution Fics, not 4, I don't know what AO3 is doing.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Nightmare From Which I Cannot Wake

**Author's Note:**

> They never really go into detail about the night that Miles goes to kill Bass, do they? (Or do they? I’m only like halfway through Season 2.) Anywho. If they have, I don’t know about it. So here it is: what’s going through Miles’ head as he tries to kill his best friend. I’ll probably rate this mature just for language and past mentions of smut, but there probably won’t be smut because this is a serious moment and no matter what, I can’t keep smut completely serious. (I’m sorry.)
> 
> Please comment, I love hearing from you guys! Kudos are like little cookies, as well. If you enjoyed it, let me know! If you didn’t, let me know also! Oh, and disclaimer, none of these brilliant characters belong to me. 
> 
> Kirk Out

00800

 

The light reflected those endless blue eyes, flickering like fire and stretched wide, pupils blown. Eyes that go from lazy and confused from sleep to crystal clear within seconds. Miles could see the gun shaking as he held it up and he moved so that both of his hands gripped it. Bass had parted his lips just a few seconds before, as if intending to ask Miles something. Now he simply looked a man trapped in some sort of nightmare and desperately searching for a way to escape. 

 

Miles wondered briefly if he was in a dream. It all felt unstable and unreal, as if he would wake up a few moments later, in his bed, heart pounding and wondering what on earth he had been thinking about, because he wouldn’t kill Bass. Never Bass. Bass was the one who had his back, the one who was his support. 

 

When had it come to this?

 

Miles was suddenly thinking of a time not so long ago, of when they had been simple boys, before they had seen the horrors of war and the depravity of humanity after the blackout, when they had been nothing but family and closer than brothers. When Miles had jokingly held his hand as Bass had gotten that damned tattoo that now signified everything that Miles’ twisted, wicked mind had created and called him a pussy. Bass had squeezed his hand hard enough to grind the bones and didn’t let go, eyes closed in concentration and lips whitened in pain. 

 

Miles had twisted Bass into this perverse creature, that was what had happened, and hell if Miles didn’t feel guilty. Bass had been a good person, someone Miles was insanely happy to call his brother. He’d have wanted no one else by his side. 

 

Now, he’d rather have him dead than this paranoid product of Miles’ darkest, most twisted ideals, the kind that he shoved back and pretended didn’t exist--because, hell, he wasn’t that type of man. Didn’t he? The gun shook, and Miles’ finger was frozen--locked--as he told it to pull the trigger. 

 

“Are you going to shoot me, Miles?” Bass asked, and he sounded nothing like a depraved, raving man should sound like. He sounded like Bass. Like the man whom Miles had spent his life with, the man who was his best friend, his brother and the only lover that he had managed to keep a normal relationship with outside of the bedroom. As Bass reached out, as if to take the gun from Miles, Miles  _ felt  _ the touch, an arm slung around his shoulder, a hand pulling his head back as he drove into him from behind, a punch as they practiced fighting skills that they were already effortlessly fluent in. 

 

“Yeah, Bass,” Miles managed to choke out past the lump in his throat, because suddenly he wasn’t seeing the man who had put those rebel children into the ground. He was seeing Bass with his sunny, innocent threat, the way he had looked so helpless after his family had all been killed, and the way he looked at Miles as he sucked him off, like he was a  _ fucking god _ . 

 

He wasn’t a goddamn  _ villain.  _ He was  _ Bass. _

 

And suddenly, Miles knew with a surety that he couldn’t kill his best friend. It was with the same surety that he knew he had to get to Chicago in the weeks after the blackout.Tears had sprung up in his eyes, stinging the back like blood from a fresh kill hitting exposed flesh, and he didn’t even attempt to hide the way they rolled down his cheeks and they way his next breath shuddered out. He had told himself that he would do this emotionlessly, but there were always too many emotions when it came to Bass. 

 

“What have we become?” He asked helplessly as he continued standing there, trying to pull a trigger that might as well have been stuck in a goddamn stone. He would never have been able to pull it. But he didn’t lower the gun because what Bass was doing was  _ wrong, goddamnit. _

 

“Miles,” Bass said, holding his hand out as he slowly pulled the blankets down over his lap, exposing the fact that he wasn’t dressed in anything at all and that the moonlight streaming in from the half-open window made his old scars shimmer, as if cutting Bass with a knife made light spill out of him. 

 

Muscles shifted as he stood and skirted the bed, hand still extended. Hands had always been extended to each other, hadn’t they? Always helping, supporting, pulling out of harm’s way. They’d been the only thing they could rely on throughout life for as long as either of them could remember.  _ How the hell had they come to this? _

 

“Wait, just slow down, baby.” He pulled Miles against him, folding the gun between them, and it was only then that Miles noticed that his entire body was shaking against the sure, sturdiness that was Bass. He was warm, almost burning, and Miles closed his eyes, another pair of tears tracing their way down his cheeks, collecting on his chin and falling somewhere between them. Bass kissed at Miles’ cheeks, kissing away the tears. “What’s wrong?”

 

It was impossibly hard to remember why at this moment, when Bass was holding him as if he was fragile and showing him enough love that Miles felt corrupt, dirty even. The gun he was holding felt like a sin and Miles wanted to fling it away from them. Bass’ hand held his in place. “Bass,” he said, finally finding words. “I can’t do this anymore.”

 

“What?” Bass’ arms tightened infinitesimally around him, and he drew back slightly. Miles opened his eyes, clarity coming with a sudden shock at the lack of Bass’ heartbeat against his. “Miles, tell me what’s the matter and I’ll fix it.” As Miles looked into Bass’ eyes, he saw the entire world at his disposal. Bass would go to the ends of the world and back, kill anyone and everyone, lasso the fucking moon if that’s what it would take, just for Miles. And the thing that chilled Miles to the bone was that he would do the exact same thing. In their positions, in the way that they had to live every day now, that was a dangerous thing. That kind of love wasn’t healthy anymore. 

 

Miles felt his heart rip, worse than any wound he had sustained as he stepped away from Bass and raised the gun once again, pressing the cold metal barrel against his chest, right over where he knew he could hear his heartbeat, if he dared to let himself lean against Bass’ chest. He wouldn’t give into the temptation, not now. He  _ fucking couldn’t,  _ even if it was the one and only thing he wanted. He wanted it like an ache in his chest. 

 

“Miles, we should talk about this. Whatever it is, we can work it out.”

 

“No,” Miles said, and his voice was certainly more stable than it felt it should’ve been. “There’s nothing that can be discussed. Because it will just go on, and when we finally look up, we’ll have found the world’s crashed around us while we were too blind, too drunk on power to see it. This isn’t something that we can work out, Bass, because it’s you.”

 

Bass didn’t say anything, but his gaze had snapped shut, and suddenly he was General Monroe, the man who instilled fear into thousands. “I see,” he said, though Miles knew that he still didn’t completely understand. With a last shaking breath, he finally managed to reign in his emotions, and the tears receded. Miles found that it hurt less without his heart. 

 

“You understand, I have to do this,” Miles said, low and steady. 

 

“I don’t but I understand that once you have your mind set on something, Miles, there’s no diverting your attention.” He spread his arms, gaze icy cold, snake cold, focused. “Pull the trigger.” It was almost a challenge. 

 

Miles squeezed and squeezed, but his finger always relaxed. “Shit, Bass,” he breathed, and lowered the gun. “I can’t do any of this anymore.”

 

Bass’ eyes flickered with something, almost pain, if he had let it show, but it was gone before Miles could fully comprehend what exactly had passed through them. For the first time since he had looked into Bass’ open, fucking angelic face, he couldn’t understand a single thought that was going through Bass’ mind. Would he call the guards? This was treason, and Miles knew that he could be killed for this, and he knew that Bass was unstable enough to do it on a whim.  _ Bass was unstable because of what Miles had done to him. Miles had turned Bass into this fucking monster.  _

 

As Miles waited for Bass to make the next move, he put the gun away. It was useless, that he knew, but he also knew that just because the gun had gone away he couldn’t wipe away what had just happened. He couldn’t take it back, gloss over it and pretend that it never happened. Even if he did, Bass would slowly devolve into paranoia about Miles secretly harboring these doubts, and it would end up getting him killed. He’d seen it happen so many times to so many friends that he had been so sure Bass would have spared.

 

_ I created this fucking monster, _ Miles thought to himself. How had he not noticed that before? How had he failed to see that he had destroyed his best friend, his brother, and turned him into some twisted parody?

 

Bass lowered his arms after a moment, and his gaze was shark-dead. When he turned, it was to take a few strides over to the table that held his abundant collection of alcohol. He poured himself one and downed it without turning to look at Miles. It was another full glass downed before Bass finally spoke, tensing Miles’ already coiled muscles tighter. He was ready to fight, if need be. 

 

“Well then,” he said quietly, still not turning, and the moonlight wove through his blond curls, illuminating the space around his head like a halo. God, he had been that once. Bass had been the good boy once upon a time. What had turned them into this twisted pair? When had it gone wrong? “What should we do now?” Bass asked, flipping his wrist back in the bleakest way, downing more brandy. 

 

Miles swallowed as the question echoed against the empty walls of his mind. That was a fucking fine question, indeed. 

  
00800 

**Author's Note:**

> Geez, I don’t even know what to think about this. It was written between 3 and 4 in the morning and I don’t even know if I can see straight anymore. Tell me what you think? Thank you for reading!


End file.
